ArticlePLoS biology2022
Further evidence for the capacity of mirror self-recognition in cleaner fish and the significance of ecologically relevant marks.
Article in PLoS biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 94 citations in OpenAlex.
- Endothermy, neuron counts, and other issues: Further remarks on neurocognitive evolution in fossil vertebrates.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Steps forward to synthetic consciousness measurement.Cognitive processing · 2026Article
- The modal-modular model of animal self-representation: a comparative and operational framework.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- ManyFishes: a big team science collaboration on fish comparative cognition.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Rapid self-recognition ability in the cleaner fish.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Towards a neuroethological approach to consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- On the mirror test and the evolutionary origin of self-awareness in vertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The exploration of consciousness in insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Conscious birds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Evolutionary Trajectories of Consciousness: From Biological Foundations to Technological Horizons.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Three-spined sticklebacks recognize familiar individuals by facial recognition.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Cleaner wrasse failed in early testing stages of both visual and spatial working memory paradigms.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- EthoCRED: a framework to guide reporting and evaluation of the relevance and reliability of behavioural ecotoxicity studies.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Wild recognition: conducting the mark test for mirror self-recognition on wild baboons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A multidimensional approach to the self in non-human animals through the Pattern Theory of Self.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Cats are (almost) liquid!-Cats selectively rely on body size awareness when negotiating short openings.iScience · 2024Article
- Cleaner fish with mirror self-recognition capacity precisely realize their body size based on their mental image.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Olfactory self-recognition in two species of snake.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The ability of teleost fishes to recognize individual faces suggests an early evolutionary origin in vertebrates.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- The Inner Lives of Cephalopods.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An animal that tries to remove a mark from its body that is only visible when looking into a mirror displays the capacity for mirror self-recognition (MSR), which has been interpreted as evidence for self-awareness. Conservative interpretations of existing data conclude that convincing evidence for MSR is currently restricted to great apes. Here, we address proposed shortcomings of a previous study on MSR in the cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus, by varying preexposure to mirrors and by marking individuals with different colors. We found that (1) 14/14 new individuals scraped their throat when a brown mark had been provisioned, but only in the presence of a mirror; (2) blue and green color marks did not elicit scraping; (3) intentionally injecting the mark deeper beneath the skin reliably elicited spontaneous scraping in the absence of a mirror; (4) mirror-naive individuals injected with a brown mark scraped their throat with lower probability and/or lower frequency compared to mirror-experienced individuals; (5) in contrast to the mirror images, seeing another fish with the same marking did not induce throat scraping; and (6) moving the mirror to another location did not elicit renewed aggression in mirror-experienced individuals. Taken together, these results increase our confidence that cleaner fish indeed pass the mark test, although only if it is presented in ecologically relevant contexts. Therefore, we reiterate the conclusion of the previous study that either self-awareness in animals or the validity of the mirror test needs to be revised.
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